The transmission control protocol (TCP) has undergone countless revisions, improvements, and upgrades. However, the core concept, that a connection between two hosts is singular, has remained unchanged for a majority of communications. The packets are turned over to the routers to take multiple routes to the destination, but in TCP there is only a single connection between the two hosts. Recent strategies have been developed to take advantage of multiple TCP connections. For example, two TCP connections may provide parallel paths between hosts.
The addition of parallel paths between hosts introduces additional issues, which may be complicated when different portions of a media stream are transmitted across the parallel paths. If one of the paths is faster than the other, problems may arise in reconstructing the stream. If one of the paths is transient or has recently become available, no existing mechanisms provide a test for the new path without disrupting the media stream transmission on the existing path.